When a customer purchases an item at a point of sale (POS) terminal, transaction information is generated, as is well known. A primary conventional use of at least some of the transaction information is to populate an authorization request to be routed via a payment network to an issuer of a payment card account. Merchants engage in another well-known use of transaction information when they issue loyalty accounts to their customers and track the customers' purchases from the merchants via the loyalty accounts. In a proposal disclosed in U.S. published patent application no. 2012/0084135, filed by inventors Daniel Nissan et al., transaction information is transferred from the merchant's POS system to a central server computer for the purpose of implementing an electronic online transaction receipt system, intended to replace the printing of paper receipts.
The present inventors have recognized that the existing infrastructure of a payment system, such as the “Banknet” system operated by MasterCard International Incorporated (the assignee hereof), offers significant potential advantages in distributing and/or generating transaction information and/or other information from or at the point of sale, in addition to the conventional use of such systems in routing payment transaction authorization requests and authorization responses.